On 18/08/2010 22:47, Russ P. wrote:
On Aug 18, 2:01 pm, AK<andrei....@gmail.com> wrote:
On 08/17/2010 10:15 PM, Russ P. wrote:
On Aug 7, 5:54 am, "D'Arcy J.M. Cain"<da...@druid.net> wrote:
Would said beginner also be surprised that a newborn baby is zero years
old or would it be more natural to call them a one year old? Zero
based counting is perfectly natural.
You're confusing continuous and discrete variables. Time is a
continuous variable, but a list index is discrete.
Take a look at any numbered list, such as the top ten football teams
or the top ten software companies. Have you ever seen such a list
start with zero? If so, where? I sure haven't.
When I studied linear algebra way back, vector and matrix indices also
always started with one, and I assume they still do.
The convention of starting with zero may have had some slight
performance advantage in the early days of computing, but the huge
potential for error that it introduced made it a poor choice in the
long run, at least for high-level languages.
Besides that, the way things are now, it's almost an Abbot& Costello
routine:
- How many folders are there?
- 5
- Ok, give me the fourth one.
- Here.
- No, that's the last one!
- That's what you said!
- No, I said, fourth one!
- That's what I did!
- How many are there in all?
- I already said, five!
- You gave me the last one!!
- Just like you said - fourth!!!!
Yes, it's confusing. Which element of a list is the "first" element?
Wait, "first" is sometimes abbreviated as "1st". So is the 1st element
the 0 element or the 1 element? I honestly don't know.
Is the top team in the league the number 1 team -- or the number 0
team? I have yet to hear anyone call the best team the number 0 team!
Unfortunately, we're stuck with this goofy numbering system in many
languages. Fortunately, the trend is away from explicit indexing and
toward "for" loops when possible.
Bring back Coral 66, all is forgiven.
http://www.xgc.com/manuals/xgc-c66-rm/x357.html
Cheers.
Mark Lawrence.
--
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